Noises of Nepal

Sat having breakfast this morning I could hear a man walking up the street blowing a loud blast on his whistle at short intervals and it really hit home to me what a noisy country Nepal is. Every noise has its meaning and purpose and only a few bother you after a while, but it’s never quiet.

The guy with the whistle is the garbage man and his little cart, letting people know he’s coming to collect their rubbish. Accompanying him in the streets are the fruit and vegetable sellers, who call out the produce they have with them on their bikes as they wonder the streets, the mattress stuffers who have a very primitive box guitar which they twang to inform you they are coming and the plumber who wonders along rattling a all his metal work on a big ring.

As I'm typing this I can hear the flock of pigeons who live in our neighbours roof and the carpentry factory just down our lane with its electric saw. When I say factory I mean shack propped up against the side of another building on a small strip of land. We’ve never worked out how you get in their to order your furniture as there is a wall separating the lane from the land, which is also about a 6ft drop down from the lane. Deliveries pass the wood over the wall and down to a guy below. I also heard a minute ago the elaborate sounding horn of a truck out on the ringroad which is about 400 metres from our house.

When you are out on the roads your ears are dominated by the sound of horns. I know this isn’t unique to Nepal, but it took some getting used to when coming from England. The horn is used to let people know you are there, all the time. When going round corners, overtaking cyclists or pedestrians, coming to a junction, letting your chowkhidar know you have arrived home and can he come and open the gate or just because you like the sound of it, the horn must be used.

Power makes a noise here too as so the din of generators can be heard counteracting the 12 powerless hours faced by business. Then at home when the power returns we here the noise of the fridge turning on, which is greeted with the cry of “bhatti aayo” (power has come).

In the evenings when we are watching a DVD we usually have to pause it at some point as all conversation is drowned out as a jumbo jet takes off over our house. Then we go to bed and the noise doesn’t stop. Dogs bark throughout the night, regularly setting each other off, and the cats from the house behind us were screeching at 4 yesterday morning. Then at 6 we are woken (if Sam hasn’t done so already) by the noise of the bells, trumpets and choruses from the Catholic Church behind us as they start their morning worship and the Hindu temples all around as people raise their gods by ringing bells.

Teachers Needed

Dan has returned to school this week having finished the Easter break. We had a fantastic 2 week break in Thailand. We got to go to Thailand as BMS organised a retreat for all the mission workers in Asia. We also had Dan’s sister with us for the last week of term and the first week of the holidays.

At the retreat there were about 40 mission workers who serve with BMS across 5 different countries in Asia. They do a wide variety of jobs, mostly focused around development work. There was a guy who is the administrator for an eye hospital and a lady who is training women in basic business skills. Plenty of people from Nepal who work in different projects such as one guy who is working with conflict resolution and his wife who is teaching young adults about sexual health and reproduction. A lady from Thailand who runs a foster home for disabled children and another lady who works with sexually trafficked women in Bangkok.

There were 5 families with school aged children and another 6 of us who teach the children of mission workers in different countries. And one message came from all of them. The need for more teachers. So much work is enabled by a handful of teachers who come and serve in these countries making it possible for the families to stay. At KISC we have around 160 students and the vast majority of these come from families of mission workers. Many of these workers would not be in Nepal without KISC, stopping much of the great development work going on in this country.

So if you know of anyone who is a teacher and fancies a challenge, suggest working overseas in a mission school. It’s not for everyone, but for us it has been such a privilege and we have learnt and grown so much from it. Doesn’t have to be at KISC or in Nepal, there are plenty of places around the world and plenty of missions that support this work. (But while we’re here, KISC is in urgent need of Primary Grade Teachers, a head of English, an Art teacher and a music teacher for August)

Death of a Politician

This week Nepal lost one of its most significant statesmen in the form of Girija Prasad Koirala. He passed away on Saturday at the age of 85. He had been Prime Minister of the country a total of 4 times, including as recently as 2008 and was still heavily involved in the political process.

He was Prime Minister at the time of the Royal Massacre in 2001 and was credited with playing a big part in bringing the Maoists into the political process, forming the Peace Agreement that ended the Civil War in 2006. Just last month he had been working to help bring about a consensus as the politicians work towards writing the Constitution.

The Constitution is due on the 28th May, leaving less than 70 days now for it all to be agreed and written. Most days various interest groups are protesting in Kathmandu calling for a “timely writing of the constitution”. What emerges at the end of May remains to be seen, but if a constitution fails to arrive then the consequences for the country will be significant.

Winter Rains

We awoke on Tuesday this week to find it dreary, overcast and drizzling. It was great as it reminded us of England. Winter has been mostly clear blue sky and sun all day every day, which makes outside nice and warm but very cold inside, especially in the evenings and at night. So it’s nothing like a British winter.

But Tuesday was proper British style rain all day. I was trying to explain to some of the students in my class how it was exciting for me to have “British” weather, but they didn’t share my excitement. Only the German student could understand where I was coming from. For the Korean, Nepali and Bhutanese students it was just bad weather.

As it was our first decent rain since the end of September it also prompted a little bonus electricity. As Nepal is entirely reliant on hydroelectricity, which at this time of year is a little short in supply a day of constant rain was a boost to the system.

The other bonus is that it’s cleared the skies and we’ve had fabulous views of the mountains the last couple of days. It’s a bonus as we weren’t expecting to see them again until October. Because of the pollution and weather the mountains tend to go into hiding for a few months from now.

Samuel of course doesn’t remember Britain or it’s weather nor is he bothered by the mountains or the extra electricity during the day. His current daily challenge is trying to get to the things we’ve put out of his reach. Through bum shuffling, stretching and face planting he’s able to move quite some way across the floor now. He’s trying to have a go at crawling too, but hasn’t worked out how to actually turn his leg and arm movements into body movement yet, although we’re sure it can’t be long.

New Year Walking

We’d planned to spend Friday 1st January 2010 with some friends at a Guest House that’s part of Anandaban Leprosy Hospital (tlmnepal.org) about 10 miles south of Kathmandu. The plan was to get a bus to the hospital and then go for a walk in the surrounding area, then stay the night and do a similar thing in the morning before getting a bus back.

The best laid plans of course always come unstuck, particularly here in Nepal. Unfortunately a Valley Bundh(strike) was called for New Years Day so no buses would be running. Undeterred, well sort of, we decided to walk instead. Some friends have kindly gifted us a baby carrier backpack for Samuel which worked really well, although Dan was grateful that our friend Jon offered to help carry for some of the time.

So Friday we set out for a ten mile walk, thankfully along mostly flat roads. The road we walked along normally has 1000 trucks a day going up and down it as there is a big quarry near the hospital but because of the bundh it was absolutely void of traffic. This made for a really peaceful walk and we provided much of the entertainment as we walked through the villages with a 7 month old baby.

The guest house was lovely and homely and we enjoyed an evening of chatting and playing games before heading back the next day. We walked over the hills for about 5-6 miles to the next village when we got a bus back into Kathmandu. It was a great way to spend some time with our friends who leave Nepal at the end of the month to return to the UK and a great way to see in the New Year.

Happy New Year Everyone

Christmas Day in Nepal

I thought for this blog you might like to know what Christmas Day was like for us here in Nepal, as it probably has many similarities and some differences to the Christmas Day you celebrated.

Samuel woke us up nice and early on Christmas Day, not because he was excited, but because that is what he does every morning. Soon after we had a breakfast of porridge and tea, the same as most days this time of year. Porridge is a must most mornings as it warms you up, the temperature here at the minute means you can see your breath indoors. We then opened our presents and soon after headed off for church – not that different to a British Christmas so far.


However Church on Christmas Day in Nepal is significantly different. It’s a day when many Hindu’s come to church as they understand it’s a special day, so most churches put on special “programmes” rather than a nice short Christmas service. Our church lasted 2 ½ hours, and included amongst other things a traditional Nepali dance.

However, some of our friends’ churches went on all day (although most of them didn’t stay the whole day). After church a nice big DhalBhat (lentils & rice) with vegetable and chicken curry was put on. We managed to resist the server’s efforts to give huge quantities to the Bideshi’s so as not to spoil our western Christmas dinner coming later.

Soon after we headed home and started work on cooking our Christmas dinner, for which we had 6 guests coming. We were aiming for a 4pm serving, a slightly strange time, but we couldn’t do it much earlier due to the length of church and size of dhalbhats that took up the morning and early afternoon. But then the power went off at four making the other option 8pm which seemed a bit late. However come about three thirty it was clear that the large oven we were borrowing to cook the chicken breasts and potatoes was still not much better than warm, despite having been on for an hour. We faced the prospect of a ruined dinner, but we managed to squeeze enough chicken breasts into our little oven and we decided boiled potatoes would be fine thereby enabling us to enjoy our Christmas lunch at 4pm as planned.

Christmas lunch was especially enjoyable for Samuel who was given a selection of vegetables to enjoy. We were both distracted with being hosts and the lively conversation and suddenly realised that Samuel hadn’t quite grasped the idea behind Broccoli. As you can hopefully see, very little ended in his mouth, he even managed to get some in his eye!

After lunch we had a ninety minute wait for desert as we needed the power back on to heat our Christmas pudding (steaming would have taken much longer we realised too late). We then enjoyed an evening of games, chatting and eating various desserts; we had a choice of Christmas pudding, Banoffee pie and mincemeat pie plus a selection of cookies, mince pies and other nibbles. Then at 8.45pm came the moment we’d all been waiting for. Unfortunately it couldn’t be found anywhere online to view it live, but we were able to listen live to the Queen’s speech. A few more games and trips to the pudding collection brought our first Christmas as a family to a close.

Happy Christmas

Christmas time in Nepal is not quite like the UK, as you can probably imagine. For starters we’ve only really become aware that Christmas is upon us in the last 7 days. Not like the UK where cards where appearing in some shops before we left back in September.

In the last 7 days we’ve had the Kathmandu Chorale, a choral group made up of mostly ex-pats, give their annual Christmas Concert, the British Embassy Christmas Carol Service and KISC’s Christmas Carol Service. They are already forming part of our Christmas tradition here (indeed for more information on them just look at last December’s blog).

This year there is also the threat of a nationwide, general strike by the Maoist party. They are in the third phase of the protests about the actions of the President back in May. The strike they are planning will initially be for just 3 days, but if their demands aren’t met they are saying it will continue indefinitely. This means that there is the possibility of everything being closed for quite some time if the strike is as serious as some believe it might be. So yesterday we went out and stocked up, including everything we need for Christmas dinner.

Changing tact completely Copenhagen has dominated the news everywhere this last week or so. You may have seen on the news that the Nepali government held a Cabinet meeting at Everest Base Camp a few weeks back, with the aim of raising awareness of Climate Change; flying everyone up there in helicopters for a short meeting. They’ve also taken about 400 delegates to Copenhagen. The words footprint and Carbon spring to mind.

Of course it is the poorer countries, like Nepal, that are likely to be most affected by changes to the climate. We saw evidence of this last year when trekking in the Himalayas we saw a Glacier that had retreated quite some way, compared to photos of just 50 years ago. However, we know it is also many of the poorer countries that are the worst polluters as they strive to catch up with the west in terms of development. But change is happening so fast in places like Kathmandu policies and procedures aren’t put in place to moderate the development and protect the environment. We see that daily with streets thronging with traffic pumping out thick black fumes and the outskirts of the city littered with hundreds of brick factories making the bricks to keep up with the city’s unregulated growth and adding plenty of their own fumes to the atmosphere.

Anyway, Hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Dan, Becky & Samuel